Read the full article by Srishti Prabha at Sacramento News & Review
California’s 2020 census identifies Punjabi as the 10th largest linguistic group in California, and the third most spoken language in Sutter County, near Sacramento. And the Sikh temple of West Sacramento estimates 40,000 Punjabi Sikhs live in the Sacramento Valley.
Yet, Mandeep Singh, Sacramento regional director of the Jakara Movement, says the community remains underrepresented and unacknowledged.
“Punjabi Sikhs have been here for over 100 years — they helped build California and the United States,” he says. “Yet, many of our students don’t know their own history.”
Singh is working to make space for a community rooted in the region’s history of agricultural labor since the late 1800s through the Jakara Movement, an organization dedicated to organizing and empowering Punjabi Sikhs and other underserved communities in Sacramento and California’s Central Valley. We spoke with Singh about the organization’s youth-led programs, ongoing community initiatives and the role of cultural identity in addressing systemic inequities in Sacramento.